


it crawls up in the ground

by Stacicity



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: M/M, The Lonely - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:47:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23855590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stacicity/pseuds/Stacicity
Summary: The Lonely is just another stop on the journey. It doesn't want to let Martin go.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 14
Kudos: 112





	it crawls up in the ground

After the scorched and blackened ground of the Desolation, the kiss of cold mist is almost a relief. It’s _quiet_ here, nothing but the crunch of sand under their feet, the distant sound of the tides. The relief won’t last long but Martin’s learned to take cold comfort where he can, standing on the beach to look out at the horizon. 

The dark stake of the Panopticon is still in the distance, of course. It’s closer, now, but it’s only a silhouette through the fog, and the pressure of being watched feels somewhat lesser here. Jon’s hand is warm in his. 

“Where are we?” Martin asks, knows what Jon will say before he’s even finished voicing the question. 

“It doesn’t-”

“I _know_ , I know it doesn’t work like that, but where - where _would_ we be? If anything was working normally anymore?” 

There’s a sigh, that now-familiar rush of static as Jon concentrates. “Kent, I think, um- Westgate-on-Sea, if you want to be specific.” 

“Oh. We’ve gone too far south, then?” 

“No. It’s-” Jon moves his finger in the air in a little spiralling shape, “the Dark, when we met Rayner, that was in what _would_ have been the Brecon Beacons. We’re where we need to be. Closing in.” 

Martin tries to think about how walking in a straight line can lead them circling through the country like water down a plughole, gives up after a few seconds before it gives him a headache. 

“Not quite like a sink. More like elliptical orbits,” Jon adds a moment later, “comets. Thematic, really.” He tries a smile, and it falters when Martin just looks at him. “Oh. That wasn’t-”

“No. That wasn’t out loud.” 

“Sorry.” 

The closer they get to the Eye, the more Jon seems to Know, focusing in on the details, hearing some of Martin’s thoughts as if they’d been spoken. It’s not his fault. Martin has nothing to hide from him anyway, really, but there’s a vulnerability in having his mind flayed open. The straps of his backpack are pressing into his shoulders and he grimaces, shrugging it off and sitting down on the ground. The tide’s out. There aren’t any seagulls circling. Just a long expanse of sand and the distant swell of the sea, so far out that Martin wonders how long it would take them to walk towards it. 

Jon stands behind him, shifting his weight a little from foot to foot, looking around them. Martin closes his eyes. 

“Sorry. Do you need to, um-”

“Not right now. We can rest for a few minutes, but we need to keep moving. It’s not safe for you here.” 

Martin frowns, craning his neck up to look at Jon, picking him out against the uniform white of the sky. “I thought you said-”

“I _know_ what I said. But it’s not safe for _you_ here, specifically.”

“Oh.” Martin realises where they are all at once. Shifting, oppressive silence, so heavy that he thinks if he strains hard he could hear the sound of the eyes moving in the sky, a slick glide against the atmosphere. “It wants me back.” 

“Yes. I won’t let it.” Jon’s getting better about being honest with him about these things, disposing of the half-truths and giving him the facts. The Lonely wants him back. Of course it does. Martin presses the heels of his hands against his eyes and sighs. 

“Is there anybody else here?” 

He hears Jon open his mouth, the little intake of breath, hesitation as words catch in the back of his throat. “You- oh. You can’t see them, can you?” 

Martin lifts his head and concentrates, tries to find spots against the beach where the mist might curl around the silhouette of whatever poor soul is hidden there, but the horizon is flat and empty and the slate-grey sea blends into the sky and he can’t see anyone. Anything. Just the land and the sea and the sky blending together, drawing into a point at the end of the world. 

“How many are there?” he asks instead, feels Jon sit down next to him, the scratch of a sand-covered palm against his hand. 

“Hundreds. I don’t think they can see each other, either, they’re just - standing here.” 

_Hundreds_. It’s not that large a beach. The sand is broken up by craggy rocks and dark, reaching limbs of seaweed. Martin imagines sitting here for hours, days, weeks, staring out at the sea, nothing but the curl of mist around his ankles and the desolate sky, the tide washing out, coming in. Do they move, he wonders, when the tide comes in? Or do they just let it swallow them? Would it matter? Would anything? 

“- _tin!_ ” He blinks, turns his head to look at Jon. 

“Sorry. Did you-”

“We should move on.” Jon looks tense, washed out, the warm brown of his skin faded to grey. Behind them there are ramshackle cabins painted in what might have once been yellow and green and powder blue, and it all looks greyscale now. The whole world is desaturated, like waking up at five in the morning to a cool, silent street, only orange streetlamps to break up the darkness. There aren’t any streetlamps here. It isn’t _dark_. It’s just-

“Martin.” 

Jon’s outline is fuzzy. Martin blinks hard, pushes his glasses up and then down again, brow furrowed. “Sorry. I can’t-”

“I know. Just listen to my voice. I’m here.” 

Jon’s here. Martin heaves in a breath and tastes salt at the back of his throat, feels cold air settling heavy in his lungs. If he breathed out now, he wonders if it would look like mist - but it’s nothing. No indication of his breath settling anywhere, no mist, no heat. Perhaps not even enough to fog a mirror. He puts his backpack on again and tightens the straps, heaving himself upright and trying to brush sand from his trousers. 

The beach can’t last forever, he knows. Kent runs along the coastline, jagged and crooked like teeth. What’s nearby to here? Margate? He’s been to Margate, the arcade, the ferris wheel, the brightly coloured rides. But the beach looks endless, flat on all sides, not a single landmark to demarcate it. Even the rocks look fuzzy, now. Where did they walk in? Where do they walk out? They haven’t _moved_ but it feels like the world’s moved around him. 

He feels a hand around his wrist and looks down to see nothing. 

“Jon?” 

_I’m here_. 

It doesn’t sound like a voice. It’s like an echo, the _memory_ of a voice, a construct. Like arguing with yourself in the mirror, making up the words that the other person might say. Martin can feel fear choking his lungs. He _remembers_ this. 

_Martin, look at me_. 

Is that Jon speaking? Or just remembering what he’d said? This doesn’t feel like the first time around, maybe that’s what’s so terrifying about it. He’d been thrown into the Lonely by Peter and had felt it embrace him, choking and suffocating and fierce, but this just feels- empty. It’s not a fight, it isn’t a struggle. He’s just standing here. The tide is coming in, and the wet sand looks black against the seafoam. 

_Tell me what you see_. 

He can hear the static, there. It’s weak. He tries to turn his head to face it but the wind is in his ears, now, piercing, like a whistle. 

_Martin_ -

“I- I see-” he laughs, suddenly, and it sounds faint and desperate, whipped away into the fog as soon as the sound has left him, “I can see the _sea_.” 

_-tin….ove yo-...._

What had statements said about the Lonely, exploring an empty word, unable to interact, to cry for help? Martin doesn’t want to cry for help. He feels cold and numb and comfortable and he sits down again, not really sure what it is that he stood up for. There’s a pressure, somewhere, at the nape of his neck, and he shrugs it off, looking out at the horizon. 

_-lease….ar…._

He could walk there, maybe. It would be nice to see what’s at the end. Maybe in a little while, he’ll try. For now, his feet are aching and his bones are heavy and there’s no hurry. He can wait. He’s always been good at waiting. He shrugs off his backpack again. 

The tide comes in. It laps at the toes of his boots and Martin picks empty shells out of the sand, cracked and abandoned, mussels and limpets and one long razor clam. The tide goes out again, the sand dries, and Martin can’t see the horizon for the mist. 

The creak of a door in his periphery makes him blink, noise cutting through the thick silence. The door is grey, that grey that could be yellow, and inside it’s a riot of black and white rings, contracting and expanding wildly. 

“Martin!” he startles at the sound of his name, lifting his head. Helen beams at him. “Hallo. Time to go.” 

“Oh,” he says quietly, and doesn’t move, and Helen rolls her eyes. 

“Well, well, you _have_ been unlucky. You know it took me a day or so to even _find_ you in all this fog? The Lonely really does want you back. Come on. Jon’s waiting.” 

“Jon-” yes, he knows that name, feels it like an urgent pull in his chest. He looks up to the sky and the Panopticon is there, black and stark and desolate. “Where is he?” 

“On the other side. We’ll take the express route, you and I, shall we?” Helen extends one long, long-fingered hand, the edges of the digits swirling like a mirage. Martin doesn’t move and the next moment he’s being roughly tugged upwards, sharp fingers slicing against his coat, his jumper. “Come _on_ , slowpoke,” Helen says brightly, and before he can resist he’s being dragged through the door. 

The onslaught of colour makes him cry out, hands pressed to his eyes as green and gold and fuschia explode in coronas behind his eyelids. He can still hear the roar of the tide, the rush of the sea, and sensation rushes back into his limbs, hot and painful and overwhelming. 

“Jon- w-where’s Jon?” he rasps out, salt stinging in his eyes, his ears, his nose. 

“See you on the other side,” Helen calls nonsensically, and Martin snaps his head back to look out to the sea. The tide is out again, and the sky is white, and the mist is heavy on the sand and the shells and the seafoam, and curling around the boots of the lone figure left on the beach. Martin meets Jon’s eyes for one tense, awful second before the door slams shut.

“ _No!_ Jon!” he yells, already grabbing for the handle, and it melts like butter in his hands, dripping warm and awful over his wrist. “Take me back!” 

“Sorry, Martin,” and whether it’s a lie or not Helen does sound appropriately rueful, “but the Archivist has to take the long way round. It’s better like this.”

“I- I-I’m sorry, oh my God, Jon, I’m so sorry,” Martin whispers, hand pressed to the door, wondering if Jon’s on the other side, still on the beach. Had he waited there long? Had he gone to get help, what had he tried, what had he _said_? Helen’s hand is sharp against his shoulder and Martin’s limbs feel too long and too short all at once, wetness on his cheek that’s viscous and gaseous and smells like kerosene, his pleas sticking odd-angled and rough in his throat.

The tide comes in. Jon stares out at the water and then sets off down the beach.

**Author's Note:**

> I am so scared about the Lonely I can't even tell you and what worries me isn't a screaming, shrieking, kicking-and-screaming fight but just the quiet of it, so have a quick lil drabble about what I hope doesn't happen. 
> 
> [Find me on tumblr and say hi!](https://ajcrawly.tumblr.com)


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